i3 + windows is an absolute nightmare to work with. I have had 2 i3 laptops and they are an absolute bane in terms of speed (ie so slow for my liking). My uncle got a new acer one 3 months ago (7th gen ) with 4gb ram and it was slow. My backup is an old acer from that period with almost same specs as the vaio (except wit an i3 processor, no dGPU and a 720p screen) but it was so poorly optimised for windows (7, 8.x and 10), I have dualloaded ubuntu on it and even ubuntu had problems with it.

In terms of higher end, intel is better than AMD but budget specced AMD gets much more value for money.

if you go Intel, i5 or i7 are the ones to go for. Any thing lower specced than them go AMD.

(Original post by Bonkadonker)
Anyone else have any recommendations, preferably with disk drive?

Thank you Quasa, the latter were the 2 ive already considered and will probably buy if no one has any other suggestions

I just realised something: are you / do you still have a valid student ID (NUS or Unidays) ?

Reason I ask is a lot of manufacturers give good deals with it and it is worth looking at higher specced and see if they fit into your budget (say a manufacturer gives 10% discount, then you can look at a £388 laptop; 15% discount is £411; 20% is £437.50; 25% is £467; 30% is £500)

Check the websites of HP, Lenovo and other laptop manufacturers and see what they have (also they tend to have better quality and newer / higher specced than PC world with more choice)

(Original post by quasa)
i3 + windows is an absolute nightmare to work with. I have had 2 i3 laptops and they are an absolute bane in terms of speed (ie so slow for my liking). My uncle got a new acer one 3 months ago (7th gen ) with 4gb ram and it was slow. My main current laptop (almost 5 year old vaio with quadcore i7) was less than £900 with student discount but has 1080p screen (1080 was highest res for back then), 7200rpm 500gb disk drive, nvidia dGPU, blu ray player, backlit keyboard, usb 3.0 slots, card readers. My backup is an old acer from that period with almost same specs as the vaio (except wit an i3 processor, no dGPU and a 720p screen) but it was so poorly optimised for windows (7, 8.x and 10), I have dualloaded ubuntu on it and even ubuntu had problems with it.

In terms of higher end, intel is better than AMD but budget specced AMD gets much more value for money.

if you go Intel, i5 or i7 are the ones to go for. Any thing lower specced than them go AMD

You're going against common consensus and technical benchmarks here. The 9420 scores lower than the 6006u I suggested in almost every major benchmarking tool in both single and multicore performance, it lacks the hyperthreading of Intel's core line, and its higher clock speed and more powerful iGPU are nowhere near enough to compensate for its shortcomings elsewhere. If we're going to trade personal anecdotes as evidence, I use a fourth gen i3 laptop while I'm away working at sea, and have zero issues with its performance for the basic tasks I use it for (and the operating plans to use their a laptop for) after a clean install of Windows. I threw in an SSD and it feels borderline identical to the i7-7700 I use in my desktop rig when it comes to those same basic tasks- boot and load times have no perceptible difference.

(Original post by Gofre)
You're going against common consensus and technical benchmarks here. The 9420 scores lower than the 6006u I suggested in almost every major benchmarking tool in both single and multicore performance, it lacks the hyperthreading of Intel's core line, and its higher clock speed and more powerful iGPU are nowhere near enough to compensate for its shortcomings elsewhere. If we're going to trade personal anecdotes as evidence, I use a fourth gen i3 laptop while I'm away working at sea, and have zero issues with its performance for the basic tasks I use it for (and the operating plans to use their a laptop for) after a clean install of Windows. I threw in an SSD and it feels borderline identical to the i7-7700 I use in my desktop rig when it comes to those same basic tasks- boot and load times have no perceptible difference.

theres your answer: you have an ssd. strictly speaking with ssds i3s are ok, but with 5400rpm disk drives they are a nightmare. if the OP is willing to fork out extra for an ssd, then an i3 is ok, but disk drive an i5 or i7 would be my go to.

in anycase, for the OP, the recommendation from that site you posted has an i5 which is close to their budget.

(Original post by quasa)
theres your answer: you have an ssd. strictly speaking with ssds i3s are ok, but with 5400rpm disk drives they are a nightmare. if the OP is willing to fork out extra for an ssd, then an i3 is ok, but disk drive an i5 or i7 would be my go to.

in anycase, for the OP, the recommendation from that site you posted has an i5 which is close to their budget.

I tested it without the SSD, partly for the sake of curiosity and partly because the SSD was out of stock on amazon and I had to wait a week before I could install it. I had no problems with the i3 using a conventional HDD either.

(Original post by Gofre)
I tested it without the SSD, partly for the sake of curiosity and partly because the SSD was out of stock on amazon and I had to wait a week before I could install it. I had no problems with the i3 using a conventional HDD either.

fair enough, my i3 issues are asus and acer related and my uncles i3 hp are all pc world. I have seen decent windows i3 devices such as surface pros but my own and family experiences arent that great (or alternatively, dont get from a physical PC world store

(Original post by quasa)
fair enough, my i3 issues are asus and acer related and my uncles i3 hp are all pc world. I have seen decent windows i3 devices such as surface pros but my own and family experiences arent that great (or alternatively, dont get from a physical PC world store

Mine is a dirt cheap Lenovo which I bought for my family for £200 two years ago. I'm actually using it now because I was happy enough with the performance for the basic stuff I need it for at sea when I used it after selling my MacBook Pro that I offered to take it for six months rather than buy something more expensive in exchange for leaving behind my new gaming rig for them to use. Needless to say my brother was happy with the trade.

I dont know you so I can't say your experiences are wrong, only that they're most definitely not indicative of the performance you can generally expect from a modern Core i3.